Ruth St. Denis, Purposely Under-dressed

When the Bridgewater Township farm girl who grew up to become the First Lady of American Dance was facing bankruptcy in 1910, the newspapers quipped that she certainly didn't spend it all on costumes! For Ruth St. Denis the skimpy outfits she wore in a series of "Oriental Dances" beginning in 1906 were not just an artistic decision, but a life choice - as she described the next year in a column that ran in newspapers across the country.

Ruth St,. Denis in costume for a dance she performed just once in 1912

"I am going to live to be 100 years old, and I make this statement in all sincerity and truth. The reason why I'm going to live to be 100 is because I refuse to accept the mandates of fashion which, in its utter indifference to comfort and health, demands that women garb themselves in clothes, which per se, promote ill health. I will not wear corsets, the use of which interfere with the natural functions of the body, and act as a barrier to the proper working of the respiratory organs and defeat the purpose for which God intended the pores of our skin. I will continue to be under-dressed, instead of over-dressed, and thereby eliminate the dangers of sudden changes in temperature. I will wear loose fitting shoes that do not tend to interfere with the circulation of the blood in the lower limbs. I will take long breaths, filling every cell in my lungs. I will eat such food as is calculated to make muscle and blood. I will deny myself high spiced cooking, and I will follow a diet that made the ancient Egyptians the long lived people they were. In fact, I will get back to nature."

Ruth St,. Denis in costume for a dance she performed just once in 1912

She went on to compare modern women's ailments with healthy aspects of "ancient days", and then concluded:

"The highest menace to woman's health is tight lacing, tight shoes, tight clothes, too many clothes, and wearing six or seven thicknesses of garments around their chest, and going out in the cold in low shoes, thin silk hose, their necks and shoulders bare, and everything else to invite ill health. 

"They take no exercise, do not believe in a constant current of fresh air in their sleeping apartments and have the steam radiators going at full tilt all the time. In my declaration of independence as regards dress I will carefully avoid all things, and so conduct my life as to make the most out of it so far as health is concerned, and there is absolutely no reason why I cannot live to be 100 as well as my sisters who thrived in the days of ancient Sparta and ancient Egypt."

Ruth St. Denis died in 1968 at the age of 89.